


bal a versailles

by annular_eye



Category: Original Work
Genre: 18th Century, Ghosts, Perfume, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:34:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29603226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annular_eye/pseuds/annular_eye
Summary: a poem for a distant friend. what harlots seized from queens.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	bal a versailles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mayhem_and_distraction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayhem_and_distraction/gifts).



> dearest MaD, 
> 
> you gave me an exquisite gift a few months ago, just as i fell away from the place you put it. i came back, saw the richness of what you had left and hid my face. i wasn't able to respond coherently until today. 
> 
> this little piece is not equal to that concatenation of images and ideas i haven't yet plumbed all the way, but it's for you, if you will have it. and i shall go play!
> 
> \--thank you-- 
> 
> <3 AE

\---

the heat of remembered fur, that hard times could not save for skin  
still enshrouding despite, enfolding in a rosy glow from that sharp  
stitching exhaust that shirred and worried faces up  
into new wrinkles at the end of each day, labor done, a cold train. ah  
the defiance of ghost-gilt, the secret: what diamonds used to do in the dark  
licked only by light feeding on wax, and how glass learned to do the same,  
foil-backed, staring grinning princes down onto marble  
floors, nun-stitched sheets, piles of their shucked worth, dignity,  
whatever gravity could grab and hold on to, the luxury  
most close. now, a shed paste flickers from the corrugated  
grit of a black rubber mat. quick, beneath the waterline of exhausted  
eyes, a scoop and a landing in a dust-pilled pocket to rest in  
bright points beside red paint, a pin, a yellow coin and that vial  
battered through decades, a whisper road to its kin  
a familiar room, a hunger home to grow and fill,  
a last place to rouge, bare teeth and strike flowers  
from scholars and nobles, men’s  
stripped shoulders again

\---

**Author's Note:**

> bal a versailles is my favorite perfume, loaded with real animalic ingredients and whole sandalwood carts of blooms. it smells the way someone else putting fur around you in a snowstorm feels. elizabeth taylor wore it, which means richard burton dwelt in its aura too as they danced and chanted in and out of their diamond-hurling fits of love, but more often than that it puts me in mind of what went on in the great halls once the balls were done, and nothing proper remained awake to watch, and dionysus ruled all who still dared move in the glimmering dark.


End file.
